What a start to summer July was?! Areas of the US haven’t seen days below 110-degree weather, while other parts have had so much rain that rowboat sales have gone through the roof. I can’t prove this, but when you see folks floating down Madison Ave, you can make assumptions.
But while the weather has been even a little too summer for even the most hardcore beach and pool goers, the first month of the season belonged to two very different but equally, um, different entities…Shark Week and Barbie.
What was once appointment viewing during the height of the 2010’s, Shark Week has undergone a bit of a resurgence in 2023, bringing in an impressive 11% increase in primetime linear TV (!!!!!) viewership compared to 2022.
Big name advertisers took advantage of the increased eyeballs, with brands like Domino’s, ProNamel and Infiniti all over Discovery.
Speaking of sharks, it is a well-known fact that the first Hollywood summer blockbuster was way back in 1975, and it was Jaws. The first weekend Jaws was in the theaters, it pulled in $7.8 million dollars, on its way to $482 million in total. Back then it was the highest grossing movie of all time.
Barbie was only able to generate a mere $162 million in its opening weekend and, at this point, has made over $1 billion. So Barbie has well surpassed Jaws and there’s probably no stopping this phenomenon.
While Jaws changed the way that movie studios planned their release schedule, their advertising spending and their budgets, Barbie may have just changed the way movie studios plan their marketing strategies for future projects.
In a time where no one is watching linear TV, and no one is going to the movies, Shark Week and Barbie have created compelling visuals that people want to see.
But the question remains…who wins in a fight, Shark or Barbie? After this month, Barbie wins that fight with a huge TKO.